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26th May 2022

Amber Heard tells Johnny Depp defamation trial that she ‘wakes up screaming’ every day

Steve Hopkins

Heard said people had told her they want to put ‘my baby in the microwave’

Amber Heard has revealed how Johnny Depp‘s defamation case has magnified her suffering, saying that she relives the trauma “every single day” and that her “hands shake. I wake up screaming”.

And that she suffers constant death threats – “regularly, if not daily” and thousands since the case began – and has even had people tell her they “want to put my baby in the microwave”.

Heard was asked by her lawyer, Ben Rottenborn, how she has been affected by the case and told the court that she is “harassed, humiliated, threatened, every single day”.

“Even just walking into this courtroom, sitting here in front of the world, having the worst parts of my life, things that I have lived through, used to humiliate me,” she said.

Heard said that people wanted to “kill me, and they tell me so, every day”.

“People want to put my baby in the microwave.”

Asked how the statements and threats “continue to manifest themselves”, Heard said that she suffers every single day, “in the harassment, in the humiliation, the campaign against me that’s echoed every single day on social media and now in front of cameras in this room”.

“Every single day I have to relive the trauma. My hands shake. I wake up screaming,” she said.

Heard went on to detail how her friends have to live under  “unspoken rules” about how they can “not scare me”, and “how to not touch me”, as do her intimate partners.

“I live my life with these sets of rules,” she told the court.

Even training for something such as a combat scene in Aquaman, Heard told the court, can be triggering and spark a “meltdown”.

“I am not sitting in this courtroom snickering. I’m not sitting in this courtroom laughing, smiling, making snide jokes. I’m not,” she said.

“This is horrible. This is painful. And this is humiliating for any human being to go through. Perhaps it’s easy to forget that – I am a human being.

“And even though Johnny promised that I deserve this and promised he’d do this, I don’t deserve this. I want to move on.”

Heard told the court she woke up every day with panic attacks until she realised she could do something with her “trauma”.

“I was able to turn the things that I have lived through, my pain… into work… providing a voice for other people,” she explained.

“I’m not a saint, I’m not trying to present myself as one, as you all know, but I selfishly found relief in… being able to advocate for others.

“While I would not wish this situation on my worst enemy if it gives a voice to someone who doesn’t have it. But as I stand here today I can’t have a career, I can’t even have people associate with me.”

Heard says she receives hundreds of death threats “regularly, if not daily” and thousands since the trial has started, and people “mocking her testimony”.

“I just want Johnny to leave me alone. I just want him to leave me alone. I’ve said that for years now.”

Asked what she hopes to reclaim after the trial concluded, the actress tells the court: “Protecting the secret I did for as long as I did has taken enough of my voice. Johnny has taken enough of my voice. I have the right to tell my story… I hope to get my voice back.”

Depp is suing Heard for $50m for an op-ed she wrote in which he believes she inferred he abused her. Heard is counter-suing for $100m.

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